Not sure what to make of this, just stumbled across it. I checked their Twitter and confirmed that "icculus" himself is part of this. Anyway, probably not an issue for SG, but I thought people might find it interesting one way or the other

2016-06-26 04:28:13 LambdaComplex TimeDoctor: Can I get some more context on wtf is going on? I looked at the ioquake3 twitter and yours but I'm still kinda lost2016-06-26 04:32:01 @TimeDoctor lambdaComplex: long running hate group is butt hurt that i block them on Twitter and claims we are violating their "free speech rights" in doing so. They also don't understand what this project is and keep accusing me of pissing off "consumers" 2016-06-26 04:32:49 LambdaComplex TimeDoctor: Nah, rewind just a _little_ bit more. What did they do to get blocked, exactly?2016-06-26 04:33:23 @_Filth_ zakk blocked them because he isnt a people person2016-06-26 04:35:52 @TimeDoctor lambdaComplex: it's a very long story but they harassed a game developer a few years ago because she is a woman and had the gall to release a free game. Their "ethics" are about how her pissed off ex-boyfriend wrote a screed decrying that he got dumped and since then they've been tearing upturn 2016-06-26 04:36:15 @TimeDoctor er, tearing up the Internet trying to harass anyone who doesn't follow their lead2016-06-26 04:36:29 LambdaComplex So, lots of political drama bs that I can safely ignore?2016-06-26 04:36:41 @TimeDoctor yes, please feel free to ignore it. 2016-06-26 04:38:38 @TimeDoctor if you search for "ioquake3" on twitter you will see a bunch of people attacking me/the project who don't know what free software is and probably have never played quake 2016-06-26 04:40:11 @TimeDoctor also the user that joined earlier that I banned was named "cuck" which is a term that harassers from various forums use to attack their victims. Easy to identify and ban.2016-06-26 04:47:01 LambdaComplex TimeDoctor: Wait, how did this whole thing with ioquake3 get started?2016-06-26 04:51:32 @_Filth_ gamergate2016-06-26 04:52:51 LambdaComplex more specifically2016-06-26 04:52:57 LambdaComplex did someone post something on some forum talking about it? or what?2016-06-26 04:53:29 @TimeDoctor yeah on Reddit there are a few threads encouraging them to attack us2016-06-26 04:53:48 @TimeDoctor in the gamergate subreddit called kotakuinaction 2016-06-26 04:54:32 @TimeDoctor so there have been dozens or so of people who don't follow the Twitter account just making drive by harassing comments. I don't mind2016-06-26 04:55:31 @TimeDoctor it's hilarious that some of them say to use ZTM's spearmint fork of ioquake3 instead of2016-06-26 04:56:41 @TimeDoctor I love if people use ioquake3 forks, and especially if they're from friends.

"Chuck Norris had to shorten his beard in the presence of Richard Stallman because two beards that awesome, so close would segfault the universe (again)."

Hm, yeah. I guess that annoying them on purpose is probably only going to strengthen their belief that they are "the good guys fighting against evil". Trolls are not helping. They have to be countered with arguments and facts, I think. And people have to learn to just say "no", and ignore their shaming tactics and appeals to emotion. They are also injecting their politics into the software industry and the open source communities now (Github, etc.).

But anyway, ioquake3 is GPL, and the copyright is held by Id, so they can't stop people from using it if they want to

Which ban? In the first tweet in the video it says that they use some kind of auto blocker, which I think means that they stop lots of people from both following them and tweeting to them. I don't use Twitter, but I think that's how it works. Seems like a safe way to make users go elsewhere. Banning trolls makes sense, but I don't think that's what they are doing. Bringing this kind of divisiveness into a gaming and open source community is not a good thing.

This isn't like that though, you can't "live in peace" with someone that will just keep undermining your freedoms. That only one side likes to block people is revealing, because it tells you which side prefers to stay in an echo chamber, and therefore which side is most likely to be wrong. I would guess that the other side's behavior can be explained by the psychological phenomena called cognitive dissonance. Basically, hearing facts is unpleasant when your own views are based on denying those facts. Let me illustrate:

I don't see any freedom being undermined. If you refer to free speech: the GG community has the right to exercise their right of free speech, i.e. to say anything within the boundaries of the law. However, they have no right to force other people to listen to their crude arguments, let alone to endure their harassment. So any individual is within their right to apply this or any other blocking list.

Gamergate is a movement dedicated to fighting for ethics in (gaming) journalism and against censorship and the politicization of (gaming) media and games. It arose after several corruption scandals in the gaming media, attacks on the gamer identity and attempts by the gaming media and "cultural critics" to force a political ideology down the throats of gamers.

Hm, the Wikipedia definition seems to be completely wrong. Lying is par for the course for GamerGate opponents, I think that's part of the reason so many people were driven to speak out against them, using the #gamergate hashtag. People don't like being slandered against.

I actually remember this very peculiar article being posted on Ars Technica, and discovering that the same day, several very similar articles had been posted on other sites. Pretty obvious that someone had been talking. Basically, a concerted spread of misinformation. Not exactly criminal masterminds, are they?